Hi Dave. Great to see you back - I was wondering 🤔. Unfortunately my 6809 project has been on the back burner for just as long as I hit a wall trying to do hardware handshaking from the PC and other projects took over. As the winter starts it may be tim for me to get back to the indoor hobbies too 😊
I've been meaning to investigate hardware handshaking at some point. I know for sure that hex file uploads to my ROM monitor don't work unless I add a per-byte delay in the terminal program. All things in good time.
@@davehohacks Yes, the problems is that the 6850 ACIA doesn't actually support hardware handshaking so requires a bit of a hack. The issue is that when using USB to RS232 converters they buffer the stream so by the time the 8-bit machine with the RS232 says stop the PC has already sent a whole bunch of characters to the USB port. It can (theoretically) be avoided by using a real RS232 port on the PC but it still has issues. My current plan is to use a 16552 which has working FIFO buffers (unlike the 16550) but I haven't got round to designing a board. I got so fed up trying and failing to get the handshaking working that I started looking at floppy disk solutions instead but that was a whole other rabbit hole! In the end I needed a break and walked away to do other hobbies for a while.
It's so great to hear from you again Dave. I was literally wondering about you yesterday … hoping you'd post again! Delighted that you have. Do you think you'll revisit the FPGA graphics again? I've been thinking about using a Raspberry Pi Pico as a tile/character based VGA GPU for a 6502 computer (based off of Ben Eater's series) but am stuck thinking about how to get data in and video out with the limited pins available. I use a Pico as RAM and ROM for it currently, the display is next … taking lots of inspiration for it from you. 👍🙏
Thanks! I will return to the FPGA display adapter at some point. Over the summer I had lunch with a colleague who is an FGPA expert, and I have some ideas about how to work beyond some of my current roadblocks. Using a Pi Pico seems like a really interesting idea. (Hmm, now I want to get one so I can experiment with it...)
But which Ebay did you connect to to buy those wonders cheaply in "my" Ebay things cost at least 4 times more. I don't know! Maybe I always log on at the wrong time.
@@davehohacks oh yes, plus buying from the United States I have to add exaggerated shipping costs and customs, the total is double the price of the item. So I can never buy from there. There is little choice in Europe
Ingo assists you like a the best buddy in your project.
Nice lab & well organised.
Cheers !!
It's really Ingo's lab, he just lets me hang out there 🙂
Hi Dave. Great to see you back - I was wondering 🤔. Unfortunately my 6809 project has been on the back burner for just as long as I hit a wall trying to do hardware handshaking from the PC and other projects took over. As the winter starts it may be tim for me to get back to the indoor hobbies too 😊
I've been meaning to investigate hardware handshaking at some point. I know for sure that hex file uploads to my ROM monitor don't work unless I add a per-byte delay in the terminal program. All things in good time.
@@davehohacks Yes, the problems is that the 6850 ACIA doesn't actually support hardware handshaking so requires a bit of a hack. The issue is that when using USB to RS232 converters they buffer the stream so by the time the 8-bit machine with the RS232 says stop the PC has already sent a whole bunch of characters to the USB port. It can (theoretically) be avoided by using a real RS232 port on the PC but it still has issues. My current plan is to use a 16552 which has working FIFO buffers (unlike the 16550) but I haven't got round to designing a board. I got so fed up trying and failing to get the handshaking working that I started looking at floppy disk solutions instead but that was a whole other rabbit hole! In the end I needed a break and walked away to do other hobbies for a while.
It's so great to hear from you again Dave. I was literally wondering about you yesterday … hoping you'd post again! Delighted that you have. Do you think you'll revisit the FPGA graphics again? I've been thinking about using a Raspberry Pi Pico as a tile/character based VGA GPU for a 6502 computer (based off of Ben Eater's series) but am stuck thinking about how to get data in and video out with the limited pins available. I use a Pico as RAM and ROM for it currently, the display is next … taking lots of inspiration for it from you. 👍🙏
Thanks! I will return to the FPGA display adapter at some point. Over the summer I had lunch with a colleague who is an FGPA expert, and I have some ideas about how to work beyond some of my current roadblocks. Using a Pi Pico seems like a really interesting idea. (Hmm, now I want to get one so I can experiment with it...)
Geek on, good sir!
Will do!
But which Ebay did you connect to to buy those wonders cheaply in "my" Ebay things cost at least 4 times more. I don't know! Maybe I always log on at the wrong time.
Those acquisitions were probably 3 or 4 years ago. Prices got silly during the pandemic, and haven't really come down since.
Actually it was probably more like 5 or 6 years ago. The E3615A predates the channel.
@@davehohacks oh yes, plus buying from the United States I have to add exaggerated shipping costs and customs, the total is double the price of the item. So I can never buy from there. There is little choice in Europe